


Mass of Greed

by Skepsis_Forever



Series: Greed of Warhammer [4]
Category: Mass Effect, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: ...eventually, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Crossover, Everybody Lives, Fix-It of Sorts, Immortality, Multi, time travel of sorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2120358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skepsis_Forever/pseuds/Skepsis_Forever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim Gem's involvement in various Mass Effect alternate universes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> World designation ME-1000WH

He landed on the hard soil, looking up at the closing whirlwinds of purple and red. Not again, he thought.  
He got on his feet and dusted himself off, examining his surroundings. He looked around, a steppe environment like that of millions of other planets he had known of, yet he knew that was no measure to judge the entire planet by. He smelled and tasted the air, feeling it comparable to old Earth. At least, the Earth before it became Holy Terra.  
He tapped in the world's magnetic field and felt it was indeed similar with Earth That Was before Chaos/Nukes/Imperium turned it into a wasteland. Had he been thrown in the past of a Holy Terra, or some other Earth's? Normal Earth he could handle, meeting the Emperor shortly after being born from the merger of angry shamans was not on his to-do list. A quick glance over the surface disdained his thoughts. There was no warp energy around (how the hell did those things opened a portal when- nevermind, he soon thought it better not to know) and more importantly, the sentient population seemed to consist of blue chicks with spears. No males. How did they reproduce anyway? Was their male population wiped out? Oh well, it didn't matter.  
He considered returning, not that he couldn't do so at any time. Yet as long as he was here, why not explore? Well, he wasn't that interested in the world's surface and by now he had concluded he wasn't on Earth (wrong solar system, wrong position in the Galaxy, though it was the Milky Way Galaxy or a variation of it. Also, no Eye of Terror or Eldar or Old Ones, which meant he wasn't in his own universe... well, not in the universe he had at the time piggy-backed a ride on the tides of the warp at least) and he didn't find much fun in the above-world anymore. Nothing but almost empty space, rocks, giant rocks and suns. He was ok with circling the suns to renew his energy from time to time (thought his first love was always the Warp and the psychers that would share their power with him), but traveling the cold, uncaring dark space had become boring. Building in the cold, uncaring dark space was one way to spite it, but he preferred the (be)low approach.  
So he took out his handy cube and started making a room around him. He made it as he had recently learned to do, as a one-way mirror, making the walls look like a mirror from the outside and giving it a tinted glass look from the inside. As he began doing this, he heard the laughing of creatures from other worlds that he had made his decision. He ignored them, having long ago learned not to base his decisions on the creatures' reactions to what he did. He would do what he willed, and if that served some of them in some way... well, what didn't? The laughs just rose at these thoughts, but he continued to ignore them. Wait, wasn't he supposed to be invisible to them? He should fix that. Ah, that shut them up.  
So, after he made his more or less invisible "top of the world" enclosure, he began digging down, the outside world and its inhabitants forgotten.  


* * *

Daria T'Soni was a starting, but eager archeologist. At merely a hundred years, she was of the wave that would soon die down once she hit their 200s or at most 300s. But for now, she was enthusiastic about everything that was related to unknown or lost civilizations, whatever the causes. While most archeologists' dreams were firmly related to Prothean ruins - not that they would pass up any other ruins, whatever their age, but Protheans were the top for all their aspirations - they took second place to a greater mystery, one found on Thessia itself. That is not to say she did not alternate her works and she had made great discoveries in her relatively short career for an Asari, but she always returned to these mystery constructions supposedly left on Thessia by some unknown race in its long lost past. They did not seem Prothean, indeed, few knew what to make of them, though it was also true few denied their existence. Although gathered from rumors and period of times apart, they were consistent and found in different parts of the same area. Unfortunately, by this time, a city-state had already been built there, but the rumors were fascinating none-the-less.  
The common factor was as simple as it was intriguing: mirror-walls. From the drawing of ancient spear-wielding Asari to mining expeditions before such things were banned on the Asari homeworld because the waste they would receive, stories of mirror-walls would be found in many such expeditions' encounters. After the advancement of technology in light refraction, some have even speculated that they would allow someone beyond those artificial galleries to peer on the outside.  
The form had always been described as either straight or cubic. Some had chiseled the rock (solid rock sometimes!) around them to find they stretched for miles, or even more, to bifurc in amazing once-again straight line galleries. Some speculated they were mining galleries, others that they were living quarters, though a question kept bugging everyone: where were the rocks and soil removed? Some far-fetched theories said they were thrown down into Thessia's molten core itself, to renew in minerals found in other parts of the world.  
Yet the mystery remained, as, even though they looked fragile on the outside, they could not be broken. Another consistency in the reports spoke of the tools either breaking on the mystery mirrors or being absorbed altogether. Though unless attacked, the mirrors seemed relatively benign. Some miners even reported using the property of the mirrors to remove the debris around a gallery faster, so they wouldn't have to move them up to the surface. This seemed to work for a while, until apparently the mirrors' saturation levels would reach their peak, in which point the debris would simply bounce off the mirrors and, if they were insistent, cover them up altogether.  
She had been in many left or even restored galleries around the city-state, in hopes of finding the famous mirror-walls of Thessia, but all she had run into were closed galleries or endless, but uninteresting barely standing claustrophobic and sometimes even blood-drenched underground ways.  
So it was with great surprise that this day was not as many others. This day, a new underground canal was being prepared to dig at the site of a former mineway that had surped into the ground long ago, and as the workers were making assessments on how to do this without flooding with wastes any preserved galleries, they found it. The legendary, the rarely-encountered famous mirror-walls of Thessia.  
As someone who had written thesis on the subject and to her surprise, Daria T'Soni was called as the leading expert in "mirror archeology", as there was no term for the creators of such an artifact. The Asari, as cultural-minded as they were, who would often stop constructions of cities on other worlds in their tracks if they found an inkling of restaurable alien ruins, had put on an indefinite hold the construction of the sewer in that direction, and had called doctor Daria T'Soni and a few other leading minds in archeoxenology to investigate it. Goddess forbid they would flood with residues the only relics that predated known Asari society! Some hoped they were Prothean relics, tying the Asari to the illusive Protheans, but many doubted it. Leading archeoxenologists were known for rightly trusting their instincts, and besides something like this never having been found anywhere other than Thessia, they had concluded that "it didn't feel, or even looked like anything of Protheans design".  
When she heard the news, Daria couldn't believe it, but she awoke from her stupor and took the first airway cab to the construction site. There, she had to wait until the team had been united, with the addition of three Turian security officers. There hadn't ever been found a ruin that housed actual organisms, however some did house elaborate traps to non-natives, and the presence of mind of a turian officer had been sometimes instrumental in getting the teams out alive. Even though this, there was always the theoretical possibility that a race could have made automated stasis chambers running from some unknown cataclysm, or, who knew, that they even lived there for thousands of years. However preposterous the idea sounded, it had to be taken into account. Again, even if it never happened, precautions against sentient hostile life would sometimes save an expedition that would have been doomed for far different reasons.  
Once they were all gathered, they started descending the improvised stairs which were even now being modernized and improved upon. They had started building with the idea that nobody needed to go down there except maybe for maintenance, but now it appeared it would be an invaluable knowledge and tourist attraction, although the construction site was for now closed off to all unauthorized personnel. Some started realizing that they may have had a ticking time bomb in Thessia's belly itself, and whatever the case, only a archeoxenologist could disarm such traps if they existed before allowing civilians to roam the structure freely.  
They finally arrived at the entrance to the structure after what felt for Daria like an infinity, and when they looked, it seemed as described, with one difference. Yes, the mirrors were in pristine conditions, as if they hadn't been at the mercy of underground forces for millennia. They weren't scratched, they weren't damaged, cracked or anything else. That was how they were reported.  
But there was one small difference, one little glitch. For as they looked at the entry-way or at least the end of the gallery, they could see a transparent yellow field that somehow didn't tilt the lighting inside in its color, and a long hall-way ahead. An Asari-made hammer was just beyond the field, unscathed. The archeologists threw each other knowing looks, with the few that hadn't noticed this aberration.  
"What's wrong?" Asked a Turian officer, picking up on their body gestures.  
"It's not supposed to be open." Replied Daria mechanically.  
"Maybe the construction workers accidentally threw a bulldozer ball or something at it, maybe they used explosives." Tried to explain the Turian.  
"No, you don't get it." She said, ignoring his explanations. "It's not supposed to be open. Look at those other mirrors. They're in pristine condition. Think about it for a while. There's a whole city above them, and the pressure should be enormous. Add to that the constant tremors from both above and below, the constant plate shifting and imagine these were here for thousands of years. They don't break. Ever. It's been speculated that if you brought an eezo bomb, it wouldn't even scratch them, such is the impossibility of these things resisting in such an environment without cracking, and more importantly, with holes between them. That entrance should have been closed shut and should have looked like the walls that have been unearthed so far. This is an anomaly of all we knew about the structure." She concluded.  
"And who threw the hammer?" She asked absent-mindedly as an after thought. The foreman accompanying them answers.  
"It was me. Testing if that thing is safe. It didn't disintegrate our tool, so we figure it is."  
"50-50 chance." Daria mumbled.  
"Excuse me?" The officer asked. It was frustrating with this civilians, but he had learned to pry the words that he needed to know for a situation from their minds that told them that what they thought was common sense for everyone. Still, he knew she was in charge and he answered to her, but he needed the facts to do his job and keep these people safe.  
"Stories are about 50-50 that that field either stops dead a wielded tool or disintegrates something thrown at it, or even wielded. There's no reports of living matter being absorbed by the mirror, they just touch solid surface, but still... we don't know on what principles it makes these decisions. Maybe it's sentient. Maybe it's an organism, or just a construct with a smart VI... or even an AI. We simply don't know. And... there's no reports of that field either, though I suspect it's what's keeping those mirrors from shattering."  
She took a long breath, then turned around to the others. "I have to try to go in. We can't just stay here and look over a discovery of a lifetime. It's probable that I succeed, like I said, reports said either I'll hit a brick wall or get in. Chances of me being absorbed or disintegrated in that thing are low, and I'm not going to just jump, so... wish me luck."  
There was nothing to say. They were there to investigate the relic. And they had gotten the chance to go bodily and not wait an eternity until a hole could be drilled - if it could - in those mirrors. She went next to the field, then put a foot in, hoping it wouldn't disappear or get caught on the inside. After she put it down inside, she moved it slowly back and forth, to make sure the muscles still connected. She yanked it out, moved a few paces, then put it back in. The field made her hair follicles rise, but other than that, seemed to do nothing to her biology. So she risked going in... and so she did. For a moment, she felt the breath out of her lungs being removed, and she breathed frantically, but there was oxygen here too. After she calmed down, she motioned the others to follow her.  
The Turian was curious about her reaction, but went through next. He felt the same lack of air from his lungs, but he kept his composure better. He raised his hand to stop the others from entering, as he checked the situation. On an instinct, he checked his oxygen tube he had brought with him for emergency. It was empty. No, there was a void in there. No air, and nothing else.  
"It empties my oxygen tank." He said slowly. "And possibly my lungs. Be prepared to lose air once you enter, but you'll still be able to breathe, so it's probably safe to enter." On another whim, he checked the soles of his feet. They were supposed to be dirty from the road from the surface, but they were spotless. He looked slowly at Daria. "Check the soles of your feet. Tell me if there's dirt on them."  
She did and was surprised that her footwear were spotless. "That field cleaned us up, outside and inside... without killing us..." she said in awe. "But... where does all that air and matter go? Any spikes on the outside?"  
The scientists nodded in the negative, and slowly but surely they went through the field. Nobody got any nastier reaction than having to replace the air in their lungs, and while being prepared didn't make it easier, it made them less panicky.  
After everyone entered, they started to slowly make their way through the tunnel. It was illuminated with sporadic lights from above, enough for them to see the tunnel ahead of them, but not enough to make it look like a lighted room. Daria suspected it was some energy maintenance system, or that its inhabitants had better eyesight than Citadel races.  
They continued moving at a steady pace, Daria finally noticing the walls. It seemed the theories were correct, its inhabitants could see on the outside. And what she saw... was breathtaking. It was like walking in a mine, but everything was so... clear and cut so straight. All so straight. The rock and sometimes even jewels could be seen, and sometimes, intriguing, small "scars" that showed something was removed from the rock. This told her that the race that had built this appreciated or at least had use for at least some material that were not simple rock.  
As they moved, they started to see a figure mumbling and moving a device over the rock, and as they drew closer, they noticed he was holding a cube, though for what purpose, they could not distinguish. They didn't slow their pace, although they became more cautions. Was this one of the race's people or an automaton? It was a head taller than an average Asari, and maybe twice as bulky, although the tunnel still left room for something of its size to move next to it without discomfort. It seemed to be Asaroid in form, and not dissimilar to the Asari, Turians, Batarians or even Krogans, though what it held behind the black and red robe they still didn't know. They approached it cautiously, now noticing that the cube in its hands was, for lack of a better term, cutting, or even removing rock, though at an excruciating slow pace, from a beautiful red uncut jewel. It continued to do this without appearing to notice them, which prompted Daria to try to communicate with it.  
"Hello?" She said in her language, and the creature did not stop what it did. They were still weary of going near it or provoking it, so they moved cautiously in a line next to it, continuing on their journey. They had suspected it was an automaton. They were wrong.  
"We should continue until we find something like a command center. That field didn't touch our rations, and it actually cleaned our water from any radiation or impurities. Left only two molecules of hydrogen for every one of oxygen and that was all. I'm not sure what it did to our bodies though, but point is, we still have as much water and food as we brought. It'll last us five days without problems, and we could probably survive over a month off them if we really stretch them, but I hope it doesn't come to that. And we'd need to rest somewhere if we're in here too long. I'd still rather we get some results instead of just overly long tunnels and a Turianish automaton to write in my report."  
As the Turian talked, they noticed the buzzing of the cube had stopped and the possible automaton had remained silent and eerily still. Trying once again to communicate without invading its personal space and failing, the group continued their journey.  
Little did they knew, after he calculated the xenos were way out of earshot, the Mechanicus Adept sent in binary code a recording of all it had witnessed, from all possible angles from its augmented body. As he was not specifically ordered to debilitate all xeno in sight, he merely reported the apparent breach into their hab system.  
He continued the tedious job of removing the gem without removing any portion of its structure and only from the rock, and without dropping it or breaking it. All the time since he had noticed the intruders 3.05964767467 standard Terran minutes before, he had his mechadendrites ready to smite the xenos if they made any attempt at defiling his Omnisiah-given body. He started saying prayers both to the machine spirit inside the cube, as well as to remove the perceived taint the xenos had brought into their holy domain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> World designation: ME2100RD

Commander Jane Shepard was finally to show her evidence of the Collector and the Reapers, and if that didn't do it, go through the Omega 4 relay. She had gathered the best the Galaxy had to offer, outwitted the Illusive Man and now heading to the Citadel to expunge all the evidence.  
However, EDI broke her from her thoughts as she was told she had a message from Admiral Hackett. She took it in her room.  
"Hello, Shepard."  
"Hello, Admiral. What do I owe this call to? I was about to head to the Citadel and expunge the evidence on the Reaper threat to the Council."  
"You'll have to delay that, Shepard. This is important. An anomaly was detected, both by us and Cerberus near a human colony. We need you to head there ASAP and retrieve the package, readings or whatever it is. Some of our scientists suspect it might be a vessel somehow escaping the Reapers' previous cycle. Far-fetched, I know, and if you ask me now that they know about the Reapers, our techheads are treating them like the Protheans, tying any wild event with their presence. Still, whatever it is, if it can help us fight the Reapers, it's best in your hands and ours if you're willing to share than in Cerberus."  
"Might as well, Admiral. We're heading to the Omega 4 relay if the Council listens to us or not. This way at least if it fails, we'll be prolonging our lifespan for a little bit." She said in dark humor.  
"I wish you the best in all of those things, Shepard. I've transmitted to your ship's computer the coordinates. Hackett out."  
Shepard sighed. A little detour wouldn't hurt, would it? Maybe it could indeed bring salvation to the Galaxy.

* * *

In the dead cold of space, the Normandy started checking the coordinates. They suspected they didn't have much time until the colony would "lose" track of one of its ships that would "get lost" in space, around the same coordinates, and start shooting if they found interference, Cerberus logo on the hull or not.  
So they scanned frantically and finally found something worth towing. It had the mass and size of an escape pod rather than a bigger vessels, but the readings were strange.  
"We sure about this, Commander?" Asked Joker. "Whatever's in there could be hostile."  
"We gotta start taking chances. The Reapers won't wait for us, Joker."  
"Ay ay, Commander. Towing the thing now."  
Everyone was curious about their new find, and after confirming that nothing around the pod seemed to be harmful, the crew entered carefully into the cargo bay where it had been moved. Jane quickly made sure the others stayed a good ten meters from the thing, while she directed Mordin to come with her, while Grunt and Jack closer, in case the thing turned hostile. She figured brute force was the safest bet, and if it failed the ones with more brains waiting from the sidelines would have more time to analyze the potential hostile's actions.  
Damn, she thought to herself, when did she become so jaded? In a different time, she would look at the stars, dreaming of seeing aliens and being friends with them. Now, they were in the middle of potentially a first contact and all she could think of was how to immobilize and shoot it better. Still, she consoled herself, she didn't want to take the chance. Maybe it was something running from the Reapers. Or maybe it was a trap from the Reapers. Maybe something half-way or completely indoctrinated. She just didn't know.  
"Amazing." Mordin was mumbling. "Metal composition unknown. Hard elemental bind. Very hard. Almost... as if there is no or little space between the basic molecules... this should be impossible... something like this... theoretically could survive plunging into a sun or even black hole... the power and knowledge needed to create something like this..."  
Shepard half-listened as she got closer and peered on the pod's surface. A strong glass greeted her, noting inside a humanoid - or human - apparently sleeping. Except his black hair and normal human skin, there was nothing really distinguishing about him.  
"Does it have any controls? Any way to open it?" She asked.  
"No. This is strange... no controls, no buttons... would assume should have backup in case systems inside are damaged... unless they didn't want to ever wake him up..."  
This sent a chill up the spines of the gathered. What if this was a trap, a tomb for something worse?  
"Maybe he was just too important to get captured." She said half-heartedly.  
If it wasn't for the looming Reaper threat, she would leave it be. But she needed anyone and anything she could recruit her cause. So she did something so illogical, so human, that it amused the gathered aliens.  
She knocked on the glass.  
And he opened his eyes.  
Green, jade-like eyes stared into her blue ones and at her red hair and blinked. He rubbed them and looked at where he was. Ooh, looks like he got picked up. By humans... ah, humans, humans everywhere. He grunted, but then stopped when he scanned the rest of the room. A big, scary reptile like creature, a frog-like creature, some blue women, some more humans... well, maybe there'd be some fun here after all.  
He remembered someone knocked on his pod (more like pad) and gave a white spotless grin and knocked back. He blinked again and just said.  
"Hello."  
"Uh, hello. You need help in there?"  
"No, I'm perfectly fine!" He answered cheerfully, still with that apparently not-fake grin splattered on his face.  
"Uh, yeah." Stumbled Shepard. "Would you mind coming out of there though? Unless it's somehow bad for any of the species present, in which case, do please let us know."  
"No, no, nothing's gonna happen if I open this. I just... slept for a while and I've been riding around this thing for some time and you interrupted my cruise. But you guys might be fun to be around too."  
"Uh... ok?" Shepard didn't really know what to say to that.  
As she continued looking, she saw him pull a switch and the glass dome opened, revealing him in his all-black outfit. He rose up like a vampire out of his casket (and now that she considered it, that description seemed fitting) and looked around almost happily.  
"So... who're you guys and why did you drag and my crib?"  
"I'm Commander Jane Shepard and you're on the Normandy." She watched him carefully for any sign of recognition, but found nothing. Just how long had this guy been sleeping?  
"Tim Gem, nice to meet you. So, what kind of ship are you running?"  
"Seriously?" Asked Jack incredulously. "You don't know who Commander fucking Shepard is?"  
Gem turned his eyes on the half-naked woman and didn't bat an eye. This was raising more alarms in Shepard's mind. No lust, no shock, no annoyance, just observation. He looked more and more like a "seen it all" kinda guy that's pretending to be happy because he's a few steps from completely going mental. And she was starting to have the suspicion he probably wasn't human, or if he had ever been, was something else right now.  
"Nope, no clue. The falls and stuff tend to scramble my mind from time to time... and the splitting of my warp form from time to time... not that it usually matters." He said like it was the most natural thing in the world. He looked at Jack again. "And you should be grateful Slaanesh's not here, he'd give you a whooping, whoo..." he mumbled just enough for Shepard to hear. She didn't know what to make of him, but she resolved to keep an eye on him.  
"Listen, brain-case, you should get off at the Citadel or you're gonna get yourself killed here. We're fighting some tough-ass shit." She huffed.  
"Ooh, is it gonna be fun?" He grinned at them. Most had to resist the urge to face palm and started scattering. Except Mordin of course.  
"Excuse me. I'm Professor Mordin. Could you tell me more about your pod?"  
"Oh, this old thing? It was a... gift, and I accepted gladly."  
"From an alien species?"  
"You could say that." He said, and looked vacantly, as if reminiscing a pleasant memory.  
"Do you know of its specifics?"  
"I know it was built to last. Go into a sun, force a black hole to slingshot it instead of swallowing it." His wistful tone changed in a second, almost making Shepard take a step back from the backlash and Grunt, the only one with the other two remaining, continuing to look at him curiously. "But it's mine. And if someone tries to take it from me, I'll fucking kill them. This thing is worth more than the homeworld of either of your species." He said in a deadly tone.  
"Don't worry, Mr. Gem, it's your property and I'm not going to press you into giving it away, but I'd like you to let Professor Mordin scan it."  
His mood abruptly changed to his jovial one and he answered. "Fine, but just the outside and just as I'm letting you keep it in your cargo."  
"Fair enough." Said Shepard.  
"But Commander," protested the Salarian, "you're a Spectre, you have a right to impound it if-" the Salarian was cut short as a small storm appeared to be forming from a green fog in the cargo bay and the sound of metal distorting. EDI's avatar appeared before Shepard could react to anything.  
"Commander, I am detecting unusual readings at your current location, similar to those that alerted us to the pod's location."  
Shepard looked at Gem, a look of fury in his eyes where now not two gems, but two fires were present. She tried to keep her calm and disarm the situation.  
"Mr. Gem, is your ship acting up?"  
"No, that's me doing it." He said in a low, threatening tone. "And I expect you hold your part of the deal, or I will keep my own. And you can count on that, Commander. I don't give a shit what a Spectre is, you're just a fucking human playing with things you don't understand and I'm worse than any of your enemies put together."  
Shepard gulped, but nodded, and the room suddenly returned to normal. Mordin wisely stopped talking, as Gem got up and the pod closed itself automatically.  
"Any chance you'll give me a tour of the ship?" He asked cheerfully, as if the storm from hell with the weird-ass whispers and technicolor lights never happened.  
"I would be delighted to do so if you would accompany me." Said EDI's avatar and he nodded and left the cargo bay, leaving its three occupants looking at each other and then, as one, at the pod without saying a word.

* * *

The rest of the way was uneventful, with Mordin continuing to try fruitlessly to find out how the ship was created, while the crew gossiped about their mysterious visitor.  
He was currently on the observation deck, looking at the Citadel. He had seen bigger structures, but the rage of the old dead rang here, yet they seemed impotent, unable to pierce the veil of the warp, which was strangely strong even here. He peered into the station's past and saw it all: how they were slaughtered every 50 thousand years by things that looked to them out of some Cthulhian nightmare. He almost scoffed aloud. What he had become greatly trumped them, they were just robots with egos. He peered even further. Who turned against their creators. Well, humbug. He continued to look on the station, and the more he saw, the more it looked like a den of inequity. It had all the bearing of regally on the outside, but on the inside it was a rotting corpse that, if Nurgle had any reach here, would have turned in seconds. And this was supposed to be the center of their free democratic Galactic civilization. He continued to look, waiting for Shepard to come into his radius. He had experience waiting, no need to run after her. She'd come sooner or later. And she did.  
"What do you think of the Citadel, Mr. Gem?"  
He spoke, but didn't turn to her. "I have bad news for you, Shepard. The Citadel is a death trap."  
"Oh?" Asked Shepard curious. Did he have insight on the military positions of the guns, or the-  
"Reapers built it for you guys to gather 'round like pigs to the slaughter." He threw the bomb-shell, and everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at him in silence. "That's not all though. They made the Keepers too, from folk like you or the Protheans. Husks with functions. The biggest trap is that it's a big-ass mass relay. When they send the command to the Keepers, Conduit or not..." he trailed off.  
"They'll take the Citadel." She whispered. "And from there..."  
"The Galaxy." He finished. He turned around and looked her in the eye, seeing her past, present, future. Her future failure.  
"Why do you bother to fight?"  
"What?"  
"I've seen the shit this Galaxy is in. Terminus, Omega? Those are just the visible crap places. The whole thing is one crap place. You're killing each other, you're torturing each other, you're enslaving each other and most of you are OK with it. No, not ignorant, everyone knows, but everyone closes their eyes to it. Why's this shithole worth saving when half of it is scumbags? The whole crap is rotten to the core. Rogue Spectres like Saren? La-di-la-la-la-can't-hear-you Councilors? A species slaughtered to extinction, another castrated, another left in space to die, another "quarantined" because it's not organic? The Shadow Broker? Cerberus would be the only sane left if they weren't indoctrinated by the Reapers already. What's there to save, Shepard?"  
She looked at him like he grew another head. Was he a spy from the Reapers? Or the Council? Or some other organization? If he didn't even know who she was until a few days ago, how did he know so much now? Yes, what he said was true, but that didn't mean there wasn't still good left.  
"Us. Our loved ones. What's left of our humanity or whatever the species equivalent. And maybe for a better and certain future."  
Gem sighed and walked away. "I'll give this shit world one chance. I'll pitch my story to the council after yours. If they still don't do anything, I'm outta here. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of these Reapers and I could take them on, but they'd probably wipe out the Galaxy anyway and I'd wipe the previous races' genetic material in the process, and I learned a long time ago there's no use in fighting for revenge, only profit. So I don't think it's worth it. This Galaxy needs a fresh start, and then the Reapers can go away. But rebuilding on the bones of your dead... it'll just end up even shittier and useless."

* * *

Gem observed impatiently as Shepard tried to explained to these fools the impending danger, and how she was snidely rebuked at every turn. Worse, those present, Hackett, Anderson, they were both standing at attention and pleading with these people. Only he stayed indifferent and as disrespectful as one could at an arbitrarily considered civilized meeting, with his hands in his pockets and in the "at ease" position. He finally saw that Shepard was getting close to putting an end to this useless game.  
"I have one more person that has information regarding the matter." She sighed and turn from the pompous podium, gesturing for Gem to "take the stand". To her credit, she didn't order him and he could have left right then and there. It felt good to be given options, even more when you already have them, but for someone who didn't know had the decency to do so gave him hope for this universe.  
Which was promptly squashed by the councilors.  
"What's this? Shepard sends one of her fanboys to speak for her?" Sneered Sparatus.  
"Now, now, Sparatus, let the children get their burden off their chests." Said Tevos condescendingly. At least the Salarian had the decency to be silent, maybe he knew Gem was different, but his mind was merely filled with plots and Gem soon realized he didn't give him the time of day to even think of the visual stimuli his eyes were giving him about Gem.  
Gem growled and to conceal his rage, he started thinking how the Reapers would treat the illustrious councilors. Of course, being a Chaos God, those thoughts took actual images from the future, in all their beautifully gory and screaming details. Ah yes, Gem felt better.  
As he deigned to raise his head to see their faces, he saw shocked expressions on their faces. Oh my, his thoughts had spilled into their minds. Not like he minded or anything. A quick glance around told him that the entire room, and possibly the entire Citadel had seen the images, yet all refused to utter a word about it.  
The councilors, in an act of sublime arrogance, dismissed these images from their minds quickly, believing them to be the reason of their overworked brains.  
"Well, aren't you going to say what you're here for? Stop wasting our time!" Roared Sparatus.  
"Oh? Did those pretty little daydreams you just repressed right now not entertain you?" He said with a cheerful smile.  
Color drained from the viewers' faces a second time, and Sparatus started stuttering. Before he could embarrass himself any further, Tevos intervened.  
"So you have proven to us that you can share yours and perhaps Shepard's vivid imagination with the rest of us, but I see no proof in this. How much did this technology cost and why is it not shared with the Citadel races like humanity has been obliged to do so? For a race worrying about some imaginary threat, you sure invest in something that couldn't possibly stop them."  
Gem sighed, looked at Shepard, he could continue this all day, show them the Glory of Chaos, show them things beyond time and space and imagination and they'd just pretend it didn't happen or that they were tricked. And what was worse, there would be no revolution, no one would go against these councilors because, in the end, they were the perfect representatives of their society. Narrow-minded fools.  
At this point, he just turned and left, walking past Shepard while shaking his head while she looked down, ashamed that no one stood up for him. Ah, foolish mortals.  
"Ah, now that this topic has been put to rest-" councilor Tevos began, but she was interrupted by the very vivid show of Gem's hand growing nail unlike any human's biology should. Sparatus had literally jumped off his seat and was lucky he didn't fall out of the podium and break his neck.  
"YOU DARE?! GENETIC ALTERATION IS FORBI-" He stopped abruptly as he saw the claws opening the very fabric of reality into a realm of green madness, voices clawing at the back of his skull. He resisted the urge to howl a scream in tune with the rest, and Gem took this time to address the occupants one more time.  
"You're all going to die and I'm not sorry for you. I hope your pains will be at the level of the idiocy you carried in life." And with that, Tim Gem had disappeared from the councilors' room. When Shepard would deflatedly return to the Normandy from the strange meeting, she would be told that Gem's pod simply disappeared in a space-time anomaly. She sighed and prepared to go to the Collector base with one less ally and a foretelling of doom.

* * *

She woke up on a green grass plain. For a moment, she didn't know where she was, though somehow it seemed... heavenly. Then the memories returned to her. She had failed. Her team died. She had died. She couldn't make it to the Crucible in time. The last thing she remembered was the Husk's claws coming to impale her... and then nothing.  
She stood up and looked around, seeing only a figure in black looking directly in the bright sun. Sun. So maybe this wasn't some afterlife. A planet? But how?  
She went to him, heart racing. What had happened? She had failed... hadn't she?  
And there, as she circled him, she was face to face with the mysterious man that appeared in his pod and left with it after being ignored by the council.  
"What happened?"  
"You failed. You died. Like I told you you would."  
"Then... what's this? The afterlife? Some heaven? Why am I alone? If I'm dead, I would rather stay in hell with them than in this... this place alone."  
"Ah." He sighed. "Your world is sad like that. It doesn't have the warp, the connections to the gods, souls outside the cybernetic and sci-fi sense. No, they died, pure and simple. Once you die here, you don't exist anymore, it's that simple."  
"Then why am I here?"  
"I brought you back?"  
"Back? Back where?"  
"Take a wild guess." He replied off-handedly. She looked around, some deer were running around. Maybe she was hallucinating. She remembered the deer having gone extinct and being native only to Earth. She looked at the bright sky. At her surroundings. Some ruins in the distance, barely visible. Something clicked. No. No it couldn't be. No no no no no...  
She fell to her knees. "We can't be on Earth, oh please God we-"  
"I'm afraid so. A few hundred years after the Reapers invaded. They were... thorough as always."  
"You son of a bitch! Why did you even bring me here?" She yelled, tears falling from her cheeks. "If dying means not existing anymore, then screw it, just let me die!"  
"I took control of the Reapers after that, you know." He continued like he hadn't heard her. She looked at him in shock. "I let them clean your mess and then I cleaned their creators'. No other species from now on has to fear the Reapers."  
"You had to wait until they harvested all life until you could spring your trap, right?" She asked, willing him to say yes.  
"Nope. I could have shut them down before they started, but what would have been the use?"  
"WHAT?!" She screamed again, this time in fury. "Why didn't you?!"  
"Well, first off, to let the ecosystems rebalance themselves." He said, as answering a dim child. "Then we can bring them back."  
"All of them?" She asked hopefully.  
"No, of course not, there'll be a... triage system. A new start." He said with a calm smile that belittled the situation.  
"How? The Reapers' genetic vaults? That's how you got me back? Cloning? But my memories..."  
Gem let out a mirthful smile. "Oh yee of limited technology. Don't worry, I have my way. Do you want everyone who fought with you back?" He held out his hand.  
"Yes." She nodded, taking his hand, wiping her tears with the arm of the other.  
"But under my rules. One at a time. And only those that won't give us trouble."  
Shepard blinked. "But that'll take..." She trailed off. An eternity? More?  
"It's the only way I'm going to give this shithole you call a galaxy any chance. Do we have a deal?"  
And now she noticed those flaming eyes were back, but she didn't care. If she'd have to make a deal with a devil to give a decent life to the people she failed, even if just her team, she would.  
So she shook his hands without hesitation and the deal was struck.


	3. Chapter 3

Gem nodded, released her hand and snapped his fingers. They suddenly appeared on a great grey cement floor which seemed to stretch as much as the grass plain itself. Next to them was the undamaged American White House. Above them was the same blue clear sky.  
Shepard narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you sure we're not in some fancy illusion world?"  
Gem laughed mirthfully. "I assure you Shepard, this is reality, hundreds of years into the future. Not that it matters in the great scale of things. I am capable of wonders that are beyond your or even the Reapers' belief. And this seems like the perfect time and place to apply my little theory."  
"Oh? What's that?"  
"Well, the Reapers destroyed a lot of species, didn't they? See, in worlds with Reapers, I find myself between a rock and a hard place. On one side, I could go back 60 million years ago and destroy the Reapers. But that would create a paradox. Would the species that evolved now still evolve here? Would humans still be free, or subjugated by the Batarians or by the Protheans or the Krogan or the Turians or by someone before them, or eaten by the Rachni? You see, if you change a few things, you change everything. Your people sometimes called it the Hitler Time Travel Prevention Act. If you go back in time and kill Hitler, how do you know things won't get worse without a bad role model to unite the world? And even if it gets better, think of all those people who survived who can take women who loved them from others with which they were with out of necessity... and those are your great-great-great ancestors. So my question is. Would you still exist if someone made a time machine and killed Hitler?"  
Shepard's mind was spinning. "What's this got to do with anything?"  
"Because that's how I recovered you. You didn't die because I brought you into the future moments before you died. But here's the tricky part: I had to make the Reapers think they converted you, otherwise..."  
"...the world as you described it might not be left this way by the Reapers and you couldn't control them like that." She finished, somehow understanding. Time travel! That changed everything!  
Gem chuckled. Wait till you find out about sentient Cthulhian feelings that just want to nibble your face off.  
He pulled out an ordinarily looking remote and pushed a button, which uncovered a hatch in the floor just below the stairs to the White House. He would show her around later, he was sure she'd have a shock at his renovation skilled.  
"So why the White House anyway?" She asked, following him.  
"I thought it appropriate, it was always the center of the universe in your culture, aliens landing on the front lawn and everything. I find it fitting that it'd be the center of this universe, or at least galaxy, from now on."  
She saw a round stairway, circling below. She followed him, noticing a few levels carved from rock.  
"I've been busy." He answered by way of answer. Shortly, he took her through a small hallway to a room numbered 100, and opened the door. Inside, there was simply a room, about 9 meters by 9 meters by 3 meters height with something that looked like a portal on its farther reach. The room also had some couches and chairs (all made from stone apparently).  
"What is it?"  
"This is where you get your people back."  
Her heart skipped a beat. A... time machine? That would be interesting.  
"Now, there's a catch, of course."  
Of course.  
"What is it?" She asked.  
"Well, I can make more of these, but I'll need more manpower for them, which will be easily resolved by bringing back people in the first place. But the other things... it's not a price I charged, it's a price the universe charged... a sort of price... obligation... thingie..."  
Shepard just looked at him. "Just say it, I'm already committed to this."  
"You'll have to watch their - supposedly -" he made air quotes "last moments to bring them back."  
"Why?" She asked, but it was not accusingly. It surprised Gem that someone so pragmatic could be so nice and naive at times. She was just fortunate this time that she was right.  
"Time changing prevention act, remember? After that person's brought here, they'll be put in stasis until the worker finishes "replacing" that person there. Now, the problem is, we'll both have to replace the person with the exact molecules they had there, in the exact same order, not necessarily make them sentient so that's a plus, and make sure they don't go splat the moment time is restored. Now, I have a few tools for that, but the point is, whoever's in here has to follow the victim's final moments, and make sure the body... either decays properly or is... indoctrinated properly. And this means every step of the way. Now I have a program on that console next to the portal that gives attention on what will change the timeline and will try to modify most of the problems by itself, but it'll still need a sentient element to... watch it, and watch the... event as it occurred."  
Shepard blinked. Well damn. But if this was the price to pay to recover her friends, so be it. Then a thought hit her.  
"Wait. You brought me back. And this whole house. How?"  
"I'm a patient man."  
"Molecule by molecule?" She asked incredulously.  
"Hey, I have all the time in the world."  


* * *

Miranda Lawson had been left to command the Normandy 2 after Shepard had gone to activate the Crucible. At some point in time, she had been told Shepard had been killed. That did not deter Miranda Lawson or the crew of the Normandy. They fought as valiantly as they could, tried to save as many for as long as they could, until one great blast made her see the fires come her way... and then nothing.  
And then she blinked. She was on a couch. In a room illuminated from ceiling cylindrical lights. At least they didn't affect the eyes while looking or blink like in horror movies or in hell. Not yet anyway. She looked around the room and saw a square shaped but empty in the inside metallic device, like a room-sized Mass Effect Relay. She was reminded how she hated those things now, but squashed those thoughts. Now was the time to look around. In the center of the Mass Effect Relay looking contraption was an image of a lightshow, and she could have sworn that she had seen images of the Normandy there, but before she could make certain, a hand on a stone - wait, stone? yes - chair waved a hand over it, cutting off the apparent image display device. Then she almost fell over and Miranda ran to her when she saw her red hair, catching her from her fall.  
"Commander? What's going on? Who did this to you?"  
But Shepard didn't seem in pain or harmed, merely... tired. "Heh... so you're awake... glad to see you... damn working this thing took a while... I'm just tired Miranda, I need some sleep. I'll tell you when I wake up. Just... just know that we're safe and we'll bring the others back too, ok?"  
And Jane Shepard closed her eyes and fell asleep.  
Miranda looked around and took the Commander's prone body, taking her to the door, and then to the round stairway. As she arrived up, she got a surprise in the form of the White House. She blinked, but it was still there. Carefully, she went in and put her on one of the king sized beds. If anyone deserved it, it was Shepard.  
She left again to get her bearings when she saw a man in black outside. Carefully, she made her ways towards him, noting that she still had her weapons on her. She circled him and looked at his face. It seemed familiar somehow... yet those green jade eyes made it clear who it was. The anomaly man. The thing that had ripped space and time right in the Presidium.  
The thing that had warned them all, and they had all held their peace.  
A chill ran down her spine. What was he doing here?  
"Miranda Lawson. So you're the first she chooses to save? That's interesting." He was not looking at her, but at the sun. Why was he so fascinated with it?  
"What do you mean? Where are we? How am I still alive. There was an explosion. I shouldn't have survived it, not without heavy damage anyway."  
"Why you're on Earth... sort of. This is an above lair over the one below that is starting to teem with life... well, non-human life. Who knows, if left alone, maybe in a few million years, the dogs will become sentient."  
Miranda sighed, There he went, talking insane again. But maybe he wasn't insane, she realized. He knew about the Reapers, more than he should, more than the Galaxy itself. He showed control over forces even years after they did not understand. Maybe he did know that dogs would become sentient if left on a humanless world, as crazy as that sounded. But that was not what she wanted to know.  
"How are we here?"  
"Shepard brought you."  
"And who brought Shepard?"  
"I did."  
"Why?"  
"Well, I did let the Reapers kill everyone, might as well fix the few things that I can, shouldn't I?" he said in a detached manner, like that was the most trivial thing in the world.  
"Could you even have stopped them?"  
"Yes."  
"Why didn't you?"  
"Oh, Miranda, didn't I tell Shepard back then? Wasn't it obvious? Because, as you were, you didn't deserve it. Now though..."  
"Now we have 50 thousand more years to prepare the next generation."  
"That's not going to be a problem. I commandeered the Reapers before I brought Shepard there."  
Miranda narrowed her eyes and remembered Jack Harper's mad rants towards the end, when he was indoctrinated, and his seemingly cool when he had been merely touched by the indoctrination. This could be another ploy... but her gut told her this was different. She had left one TIM because her gut and Shepard told her so, now she'd join another one because her gut and Shepard told her so, too? It was as good as she could get.  
"So why's she in that shape?"  
"I'm guessing she tinkered with that program too much and really wanted to bring you in in one go. While her current body doesn't need sleep anymore, she'll still feel tiredness from overexerting herself mentally. I'm surprise she didn't blow up the damn thing for all the time she hogged it."  
"What do you mean her current body?"  
"Well I put some improvements in you while you were out. To put it simply, an extra organ that gives you immortality. Nothing you would mind, I hope."  
"And a leverage in case we turn on you."  
He turned with that serene smile, only his eyes telling a different story. "That is true, too. You are a very astute woman, Miss Lawson."  
"Thank you." She answered stiffly. "Now follow me and show me how to work that machine."  
Gem gave a mirthful laugh and went along with her for now. "Oh, this might turn out to be fun after all." He said while walking, the line thoroughly ignored by Miranda.


End file.
